2022 October
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It is now Throw Short People month. Three months remain in the year. Time continues to be stretchy. Maybe that's why today's weeknotes are a day late, or maybe I was just busy? The World PH/Covid: Covid cases are still in a plateau or a slight rise. I must admit that I haven't been paying close attention the past week though. PH, surprisingly "controversial": This past weekend the PCSO lotto rolled an interesting number combination: 9-18-27-36-45-54. People were also surprised when the PCSO announced that 433 people had won and would be splitting the jackpot. A senator wants this "controversy"
2022 August
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Better Call Saul Went through seasons 5 and 6 of Better Call Saul the past few weeks. Spoilers below I guess. There is a little bit of tension lost in this series because you know that characters like Saul, Gus, and Mike survive through to Breaking Bad. That means the tension primarily revolves around the fates of the newer characters, particularly Kim Wexler and to a lesser extent Howard Hamlin, Lalo Salamanca, and Nacho Varga. The last two seasons solidifies Jimmy's transformation into Saul and his involvement with Lalo and the drug cartel and the stakes escalate quickly for those
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The World Despite dire warnings from Beijing, US Speaker of the House Pelosi went ahead and visited Taiwan. In response, China has suspended international cooperation in several areas like climate change, and has conducted military exercises around Taiwan, even firing missiles over Taipei. It could be really bad for the world if all of this escalates while the whole Russian invasion of Ukraine is still ongoing. As of today, we are at 4k+ covid cases per day for four days in a row. We are inching up ever closer to 5k covid cases per week. I am hoping that this
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The weekend kind of got away from me, so I'm doing this on a Monday instead. My weekends often seem to be busy, maybe I should consider just scheduling these on Mondays? The World Last Wednesday a magnitude 7 quake struck Luzon's Northern region. I am told it was felt all the way here, but I was asleep and of course felt nothing. I awoke to an annoying NDRRMC message though. Former PH president Fidel V. Ramos has passed away. There is a pattern. We broke 4k daily covid cases last week, though the counts really feel like they are
2022 July
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The World Our local covid cases continue to tick upwards, albeit a bit slowly, and the health care utilization rate still holds at low values. Positivity rates are climbing though, especially in NCR, so the "real" case counts are probably a bit higher. If I had to I would guess the current "surge" peaks in maybe 2-3 weeks. Tomorrow is president BBM's first state of the nation address. It's a big brouhaha I hope to ignore completely. Earlier today, there was a shooting incident at Ateneo de Manila. Three people died. It was a politically-motivated assassination attempt in broad daylight -
It has certainly been a week. The World Professional troll and part-time entrepreneur Elon Musk wants out of his Twitter buyout deal, and his social media platform of choice is taking him to court in response. No one is surprised by this. NASA published the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. Comparisons to previous images we had are amazing. A massive leak of documents details how Uber broke laws, duped police, and lobbied governments in their early years. Looks like the files are mostly about their dealings in Europe, but it's not hard to imagine they did some -
Continuing the MCU phase 4 things. I don't have spoiler-free reviews for these ones. This post will have unmarked spoilers. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) I watched this with my brother last Monday right after my long trip. IDK if it was the trip exhaustion, but I wasn't super impressed. My brother felt it was better than Ragnarok, I think it was maybe a bit worse. The movie felt a lot goofier than Ragnarok, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was funnier. Most of Korg's narration jokes were so-so, and I'm not a fan of Thor himself being exceptionally goofy
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I just came back from a pretty good 5-day out of town trip via a miserable 9-hour bus ride, so this past week's weeknotes are coming in late and will probably be a bit short. The World Former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe has been assassinated. Noahpinion has a pretty good writeup on how he changed Japan. Amid multiple crises, the people of Sri Lanka have ousted their prime minister via wide-scale protests. Hopefully they learn from certain other countries' mistakes manage to stop his children from coming back in 30 years to revise history. Speaking of mistakes, our president has -
Dictator's son and habitual liar Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr officially took over as the president of this country last weekend, a living testament to the power of propaganda and short memories. I did not pay attention to the festivities. In fact, I try not to pay attention to news about him at all; though I am paying attention to cabinet appointees and I must note that we still don't have a health secretary! The pandemic is still a thing! Covid19 cases are still on a slight uptick over here, though the number of daily cases at the end of the
2022 June
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The week has been a bit busy, and I don't have a lot of time today, so these weeknotes will be a bit short. The year nears it's midpoint, and it seems like the world continues to regress. A couple of the days ago, as prophesized by an earlier leak, the US Supreme Court struck down the 50-year old Roe vs Wade precedent, clearing the way for multiple states to almost immediately ban abortions. I am neither an American nor a woman, so I do not feel I have the standing to weigh in. In fact, as someone who grew -
Another exhausting, errand-filled week for me. For some reason being human means limited amounts of time and energy to do all the things I want to do. Covid19 cases are starting to go up again in these parts, which is threatening some end-of-month plans I had. I think most people aren't paying the rise in cases any heed, but I have to be extra cautious given that I live with a couple of seniors. We'll see how it goes. Markets are crashing, crypto is crashing, no safe place to put your investments at the moment. Cash is king. Support for
2022 May
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The World PH: it has been a very rainy week over here, with the mornings typically hot and the afternoons and evenings with daily showers. Weather agency PAG-ASA has declared the official start of the rainy season, making my daily walks more challenging. At least we are hopefully going to suffer less of the summer heat. Covid isn't even over, but apparently there's a new disease to worry about: Monkeypox. I asked an infectious disease specialist I knew if we should be worried about it and she answered "At this point no. But that's we said about Covid too." So -
A Quote A single grain of rice can tip the scale. One man alone can make a difference. -- the emperor, Mulan The World PH/Politics: Elections are tomorrow! Destiny is at hand, one way or another. The Leni/Kiko campaign held their final rally / Miting De Avance last night at Ayala Avenue in Makati, with attendance estimates reaching 800,000 attendees (!!). A lot of people, especially the Leni supporters, have pre-election anxiety. I wrote about my ballot and my final pre-election words here. PH/Covid: Thankfully, cases remain low. A lot of people have been predicting we might have a surge -
I've been putting my media reviews in the weeknotes but I felt like these two reviews would be long enough to justify a separate post. I posted spoiler-free reviews the other day. This post will have unmarked spoilers. Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (2022) (Click photos to view full-size) Watched this with some friends last Wednesday, only my 3rd film seen in the theaters since the pandemic, and the first time I went with friends outside of immediate family. I usually try to avoid watching all except the earliest trailers for MCU film to minimize spoilers, but after -
Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness:
- fun, trippy and very "comic book" movie
- better if you have seen Wandavision
- don't bring kids, they might get scared
Moon Knight:
- some beautiful shots of varied locations
- great performances
- plot was ok, episode 5 was weird but probably the best one
- ending a bit weak
- probably enjoy it more if you're into the comics
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A whole new month just crept up on us huh. I don't have anything particularly witty to say at the moment. The World Putin's invasion of Ukraine is now in its 10th week. No end in sight. Not sure if it's worth it to continue tracking this here since this may go on for a while. PH/Politics: One week remains until the elections on Monday the 9th. It's the homestretch! There was some kind of Baby Marcos-aligned sortie near our house last night. I briefly considered buying a tomato. I wrote a short note about my thoughts for the last
2022 April
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Today is Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week. When I was growing up, Holy Week was traditionally a quiet time of prayer and reflection; my grandmother would chastise us if we were noisy, especially from Thursday through Saturday. The period feels a lot less sacrosanct in the modern world, either because I'm an adult now or because people usually just take this time to go on vacations or whatnot, or maybe some combination of both. The World Putin's invasion of Ukraine is now in its 7th week. More and more Russian war atrocities are coming to light. PH/Politics:
2022 March
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I keep shifting between writing individual posts per thing I want to review or doing one of these "Watching Lately" posts that consolidate several items at the same time. I guess when it's a number of "less important" films or shows it's okay to consolidate them together? But if it's something like The Batman or an MCU film which are generally bigger fandoms for me, then individual posts are ok, since I'll usually have a lot to say? IDK, I'm just making this all up as I go along. This one is the last two weeks worth of movies and
2022 February
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Finished watching Peacemaker last week. This is the HBO Max spinoff series starring John Cena's character from The Suicide Squad (2021). It's a wild, foul-mouthed, witty, irreverent, violent and totally-not-for-kids ride. James Gunn once again has managed to take an obscure comic book character and wring a good amount of story out of him. The show has this ridiculous opening sequence which has the main cast doing a choreographed dance. It follows directly after the events of The Suicide Squad (there is a short recap). In-between all the craziness, the show manages to make some commentary on important issues such -
Actually managed to get through some of the TV backlog this week. The Book of Boba Fett This show started out okay, but then rapidly found itself trying to do too many things at once and bringing in so many Star Wars references and two whole episodes weren't even about Boba Fett. The show could have used a standalone season that fleshes out Boba Fett's character, why he chose to be where he is now (other than his motivation from the Mandalorian of "I want my armor. That was my dad's armor!") before trying to bring in all the other